A trip of a lifetime

We some how manage to get ourselves out of bed at 4:30am. The view is supposed to be the best in the area and we walked al the way yesterday to get here. We meet downstairs, but Gopal is not there and another guide tells us to go find him. We knock on his door and his alarm has not gone off, so he has overslept. We start the climb which is about 1000m and we are told takes about forty five minutes. To begin with it is pitch black and again we have to use the torches to walk. We can see already that the weather is pretty bad and the view is not going to be great, but decide to go all the way up anyway. We finally get to the top and most of the view is covered by cloud. We get a glimpse of three mountains, but five minutes later everything is overcast.

People are still arriving and as we go back down there are still quite a lot of people coming up. Some peoples trek has been to just visit poon hill, so must be upset at not seeing anything. Our guide tells us some people get really angry and shout at the guides when they can’t see anything. It’s a shame that the view was not great, but we have had some great views along the trek. Some people will stay the night and try the evening or the next day, but we need to get back to catch our tour to Tibet. We get back at 7am and decide to have a quick rest, until Gopal comes and finds us at 7am and says we need to go, as we have another seven hours walking to get to the end of the circuit. Today is almost all down hill, which is as bad as going uphill, if not worse. It is starting to get very hot again as we go down and I am sweating buckets again. We walk through a village where we see loads of women and children carrying huge pieces of wood. Apparently the village is building a school and the whole village joins in to help carry the materials up the hill to the site. Apparently the men are out getting the heavier materials and bringing them back to the village while everyone else chips in and carrys the lighter bits. One pair of young girls can’t even lift the piece of wood onto their shoulders and Gopal has to lift it up for them. Can you imagine a village coming together like that in the UK. We finally arrive at the end after walking down about 3000 giant steps. We have a one hour taxi ride to Pokhara where we are staying the night before returning to Kathmandu.

We have a quick look round Pokhara an happen to bump into a guy we had met in Varanasi a month ago, who had just arrived in Nepal. We have a little explore of Pokhara and surprisingly it is quite a big place and then tourist area seems to be bigger and more touristy than Thamel in Kathmandu. We all go out for a meal at the Everest steak house and I end up with the trekkers steak, which is three steaks and is the most expensive meal for along time costing almost ten pounds, but it is absolutely delicious. We go back to the hotel early as we have to catch the bus back to Kathmandu early the next morning. It’s a shame we only had one afternoon in Pokhara, because there was much more to do.